


Fall out the Wardrobe

by larissita



Series: Back and into the rabbit hole [1]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I Blame Tumblr, I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I saw this on tumblr and just, Multi, Post-The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Sibling Bonding, yup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22698868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larissita/pseuds/larissita
Summary: Stumbling back from Narnia simply feels abnormal and getting used to what used to be is incredibly hard for the Pevensie's. It's learning to walk again, even if everything feels too short. It's learning to hold on even as your hands are too small. It's the memories of something that other people could never understand. Something they would tell you, is a lie.
Relationships: Edmund Pevensie & Lucy Pevensie & Peter Pevensie & Susan Pevensie
Series: Back and into the rabbit hole [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632655
Comments: 2
Kudos: 84





	Fall out the Wardrobe

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw this post and Tumblr, asked permission, and wrote this hot mess so yes...  
> So credit goes to thewoodlandqueen, here's a link to the story she wrote in case you guys are like me and when you find something you like you just have to read it all.  
> https://thewoodlandqueen.tumblr.com/post/190656553156/the-pevensies-after-narnia?fbclid=IwAR0ZhMyxxNNsiqeBDH_7SZWij6SJUlbXWnU5o-Lv6aGmb5Q8vU-h0aJvfk8

After they fall out of the wardrobe life goes back to normal, except not really. They know, within their minds that they were always bound to come back here, after all, this was their world, no matter how much they loved Narnia, they belong here. It was a simply question of gravity, it didn’t matter how much they wanted to hide and go back, their own world simply tied them down. They had completely forgotten about England in fifteen years, their hearts completely in love with Narnia, their minds and bodies settled within their role of queens and kings. It had been natural, like breathing, like eating Narnia’s sweet apples, like dancing to the Beltane fires or receiving gifts from Saint-Nicholas at Christmas. And Narnia is all they had ever really known, it had shaped them in ways that was so complete that they no longer knew how to live without it.

So they stumble out of the wardrobe and the world seems to crumble around them. Clothes they no longer recognise on them, scratchy fabrics that pales to the velvets, silks and cottons in Narnia. Heads too light, off balance and naked without the heaviness of a crown resting on it. Bodies too short, too small and too uncomfortable. Peter gets up first, nearly falling as he uses his hand to get up, trying to hold unto the window pane, something he could have reached in his adult body, something that is too far away now. Susan gets up after, pushing with her hands a little too hard and making herself stumble, used to a heavier weight. Edmund gets up after, nearly twisting his ankle not used to his feet being so tiny, he’s ten again and his skin hitches like it’s not his. He helps Lucy to get up, his hands careful and slow, testing his strength and Lucy’s weight, careful not to hurt her. Lucy and Edmund had grow incredibly close during the last fifteen years, completely open with each other, in a way no other sibling was privy to.

They tell professor Diggory everything they can remember, and the professor tells them about his own time in Narnia, what seemed like thousands of years ago but the professor remembers a little more every time he tells his own story to the pevensies. And as the summer fades away to the start of the school year, the war outside keeps going but inside the professor’s house becomes a shelter, a shelter for the memory of Narnia. A shelter from the outside world and the useless war going on.

The kids learn to walk again, they learn their center of balance but sometimes they still stumble. Edmund wakes in the middle of the night with the nightmares of the white witch, he stumbles in the corridor and hides in Lucy’s bed, knowing she would never ask because Lucy always seems to know without need for words. Susan builds a bow and some arrows, she uses some feathers she founds in a nest forgotten by some birds that migrate south as the months turn cold, and suddenly it’s October and the whole summer is gone and yet Susan practices with her hand-made bow outside on the trees. The bow is too small, it’s too frail and too light but her body feels just the same and hitting the target makes her feel like she can be useful too.

The boys make wooden sword and a small dagger for Lucy, they practice. It helps them to get used to their own bodies again, they make little fights, practicing the moves their bodies seem to remember yet no longer seem to be able to replicate, they get used to being short and weak again but not completely. And their bodies hurt in the night and the morning after. Their muscles ache and bruise so easily now. And Lucy’s hands scare her, they are too delicate, the hardships of her life turned to nothing. Edmund helps Mrs Macready with the horses, his hands completely sure, he trusts the horses just as much as he trusts himself. When the professor gets them to meet his old friend Polly Plummer, they bow like they used to in court, they can’t stop themselves.

When Samhain comes they do it like the Narnians. They walk in the forest during the day and at night the light a fire, eat apples with the professor and think about the dead until late in the night, mourning the dead and the living, mourning the life that was ripped from them in Narnia. And sometimes the spilled tears makes their heart just a little lighter. But the same tears sometimes makes them feel like they’ll drown in their own sorrow and the pain doesn’t seem to ever fade away. They forget, by moments, sometimes they won’t remember a word, or clearly what happened but forgetting seems to hurt even more and they make and effort to remember again. At some point or another they all had tried to go back to Narnia, pushing against the unyielding wood of the wardrobe but leaving it completely behind felt incredibly final in their minds. Times goes by, too fast and too slow, before they know it their father is back from the war because he was hurt in battle and they have to make their way back to Finchley and leaving the professor’s house seems like nothing less than torture. Before they leave the professor’s house they celebrate Beltane, dance around a fire until morning comes, just like they used to in Narnia. And they can swear they felt the ancient magic that night.

So they make their way back to London, a grey city, so different from the colours of the professor's house, and so horrible compared to their gorgeous Narnia that seemed to shine with a light that simply didn’t seem to exist in this world. They are happy to see their parents, of course, they love them, it a vague and imprecise shape. After all,it’s not like the sibling know them anymore, not really. Peter and Susan remember a little more. Peter remembers his father voice when he told him to take care of his mom and his siblings. Susan remembers the faded lines and colours of her mother’s face since they were so similar to Edmund and hers. Edmund remembers his mother’s kiss on his cheek, the part he had hated as a kid. Lucy remembers only a warm embrace. But none of them remember more, they can’t anymore, they had mourn for their parents more than 17 years ago. They were strangers. Peter had had so many lives to protect and care for. Susan had seen so many more faces. Edmund had had so many more kisses. And Lucy embraced most of people, certainly more used to Mr Tumnus friendly hugs than her parents’ arms.

So they go back to Grey London and they have never felt so uncomfortable before. The house is too small. Peter and Susan have no place to practice with the sword and bow. Edmund no longer gets to ride and Lucy has never felt so misunderstood. Their parents refuse to see them as anything other than kids. They hadn’t endure that at the professor’s house.

Hesitation in their abilities is no longer part of their brains. They’ve learned to know themselves enough to understand. The way the walk and talk, not like kids scared during a war, not like teenagers upset at the war and thinking they could fix the war by fighting in it. No, now they held themselves like kings and queens. And their parents are completely lost.

They don’t know how two years have change them so much. They don’t understand why Peter is so fast to protect his siblings from his own parents, the height in his head and the steel in his spine. They don’t understand Susan’s reading habits, reading books that scholars have a hard time understanding, her poise and grace as she moves. They don’t understand Edmund’s new softness towards his siblings, his calmed and level head, his way of thinking like an adult, perfectly capable of winning any argument. They don’t understand Lucy’s new found voice, so far away from a child, her voice sure and calm, warm and her skillful hands. They’re so far away from kids that their parents worry, it all comes down at dinner, less than a week before they have to got take the train to go to boarding school.

“Susan, if you would be so kind as to pass me the salt please.” And Susan simply does so, not at all surprised by her sister’s little voice like this was a normal thing.

“Lucy what is going on? Why do you speak that way?”

Edmund seems to be the only one not to freeze, his mind used to thinking faster in higher stress situation. “Mom, me and Lucy read some books over at the professors and I think some of Madame Macready’s etiquette books simply took their hold a little too much. It has become quite a reflex.” And then Edmund keeps eating, like it was nothing weird, like he hadn’t just stopped an argument in an absolutely perfect, non verifiable way.

“Well… Lucy, darling, you don’t need to hold it on, you’re just 10 years old, you’re a child.”

Except they weren’t children. Lucy was 10 but she was also 27, Edmund was 12 but also 29, Susan was 14 and 31 and Peter was 16 only in body, he was really 33. They had a life, a completely different life with incredible adventures and the weight of a world on their shoulders, of their people. And Peter had married a woman, they had no children but they had married. Susan had been courted by men all over the world because she was considered the most beautiful queen. The Carlomen Prince Rabadash had threatened war over to win her hand. Edmund had been fiancé to Corin, the Archenland second’s prince, the wedding had been planned for the next winter, a mere few months away after they left to hunt the white deer. And Lucy had loved Tumnus in a pure platonic way but it had been love nonetheless.

They were adults in children’s body and Peter’s hand would ache when he would write with a pen instead of with ink and feather. Singing his name was a nightmare, he would find himself writing down  _ High King Peter _ before he could even stop himself. Susan forgot how to be a teenager and learning again is a slow and sad process. Edmund is no longer capable of talking to his camarades in school, they are children. Lucy no longer knows how to play children’s games.

So they all grow a little closer to each other. They write to the professor and his friend. Peter pick up fights because he feels powerless and the adults simply call it teenage hormones. Susan wears a smiles like a fake, deeply unhappy and distant from the rest of the world. Edmund picks arguments with everyone, nearly enjoying the humiliation of the adult’s ego at losing to a kid. Lucy is silent and distant, a little hand-made faun flute in her tiny hands, playing song that belonged to another world.

And going to boarding school (as Susan tries to avoid a boy), in a bench (Edmund holing into a brand new torch to explore his school in the middle of the night), they feel a pinch.


End file.
